Melissa Davey

TEENAGE magazines are picking up the slack for parents who are failing to teach their children about sex, according to a leading Australian sexuality researcher.

The head of the Promoting Healthy Sexuality Research Group, Professor Alan McKee, said a lack of sex education from an early age meant young people were having sex earlier and contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

''Thank god for the media, because in Australia today that's where young people are finding out much of the necessary information,'' he said.

''Ideally, parents would be able to do this. We know that in the real world, talking openly with young people about sex leads to young people putting off their first sexual contact, lower rates of STIs and lower rates of unplanned pregnancies.''

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More than 12,000 teenagers gave birth in 2008, the Bureau of Statistics reveals, while University of Melbourne researchers estimate about 5 per cent of 16- to 25-year-olds have the STI chlamydia.

But the author of Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls, Melinda Tankard Reist, said that with ''occasional exceptions'' teen magazines were not teaching girls to make positive sexual choices.

''Given the pressure many girls and young women are under to engage in premature sexual activity, with significant numbers reporting first sexual experiences characterised by coercion and influenced by alcohol, I would like to see more information that empowers them to make positive choices about sexuality in their best interests,'' she said.

While Dolly and Girlfriend had ''significant opportunity'' to provide healthy education about sex, she was concerned articles were providing ''how-to'' information about sex instead. But Professor McKee said the problem was not that young people were finding out too much about sex.

''The problem is that they don't know enough,'' he said. ''We're worried about the sexualisation of children. But we've forgotten about healthy sexual development.''

The first national survey of sex education in Australian secondary schools, which was released in May, found 65 per cent of teachers thought there was not enough time to teach sex education.